In the art of laying tile, it is often necessary to trim or cut tiles to fit against various boundary perimeters. The act of scribing such tile is often the most laborious and time-consuming step of a tiling project. Furthermore, inaccuracies or mistakes made while scribing tile often results in wasted tile and increases the time it takes to complete tiling projects. As such, many techniques and devices have been developed in an effort reduce the time and complexity of the tile scribing process.
Some techniques of scribing tile involve the use of tools that are specifically adapted for such purpose. Examples of such tools include those described in the disclosures of U.S. Pat. Nos. 5,701,680, 5,617,642, 5,483,749, 5,471,758, 5,361,508, 4,827,625, 3,718,980, and 2,770,043, which disclosures are hereby incorporated into this disclosure by reference. While at least some of such devices allow a person to scribe tile accurately to a boundary perimeter, in general, they are also cumbersome and time consuming to utilize. In particular, such devices often include many adjustable components that must be set and locked relative to each other, often by using threaded fasteners, thereby making such devices difficult to utilize with only two hands. On the other hand, other devices, while being relatively simple and quick to utilize, lack versatility and are often only suited for specific scribing tasks.
As a result of the above-mentioned disadvantages associated with previously developed scribing tools, the act of scribing tile is most often performed using conventional tools, such as rulers, or by using other techniques well known in that art of tiling, such as inverting tiles. These techniques typically involve measuring and marking multiple reference points on a tile and then scribing the tile between such points. While such techniques can be used to scribe tile to either simple or complex boundary perimeters, these techniques also create numerous opportunities for mistakes to be made and, in some cases, can be very tedious and time consuming to utilize. Nonetheless, these manual measuring techniques are typically favored over the use of specifically adapted scribing tools, such as those discussed above, due to the described disadvantages associated with such scribing tools.